Onus now on Rahul Gandhi to reinvent himself

The unavoidable question is: Can the Congress survive and revive itself
with Rahul Gandhi? Does the 2014 defeat carry with it any sobering
lessons for Rahul Gandhi?

By Harish Khare

No senior Congress leader was under any kind of illusion that very, very bad news awaited the party when the Lok Sabha votes was finally counted. Almost all central ministers had weeks ago cleared away papers and files, had found parking space for personal aides and had hired drivers for family cars they would have to use. A drubbing was expected -- but not this kind of humiliating hiding.

And, ironically enough, the very nature of this defeat — staggering and unmerciful - has, at least for now, made Congressmen close ranks behind the Gandhis, mother and son. Time for retribution and renunciation will come later. Even before the May 16 tally, senior Congressmen were not averse to speculating on the possibility of a second "March 14 Moment".

After all, in 1998, the Congress total of 144 Lok Sabha seats was used by the Sonia Gandhi crowd to stage a coup to get rid of Sitaram Kesri, a man who had been elected party president only nine months back. The party needed, it was argued, a new face and a familiar surname to restore the Congress back to days of its old glory.

The Sonia Gandhi regime, after initial fumbling and blundering, did undertake the exacting task of restoration and regeneration. But, let it be remembered, this reinvention did not come before a massive political rebuff; remember, no political party wanted to align with her after the fall of the Vajpayee government, and, then there was the defeat parceled out to Sonia Gandhi in the 1999 elections.

After that sobering encounter with reality, Sonia Gandhi shed most of the dynasty trapping and worked with a clutch of senior leaders to reshape the party into a fighting machine that successfully took on a cockily confident NDA in the 2004 poll.

She gradually acquired leadership qualities - team work, consensus building, patience, gift for listening, and a knack for unifying - to make the Congress win elections, first in the states and then at the national leadership; only then, was she able to establish her political and moral authority in the organisation. The unavoidable question is: Can the Congress survive and revive itself with Rahul Gandhi? Does the 2014 defeat carry with it any sobering lessons for Rahul Gandhi?

Of course, it does; but before that question can be asked, another one presents itself and demands an unambiguous answer: Does Rahul Gandhi have it in him to lead the party? Does he have that burning desire to serve the people, that zeal and the daring to want to re-write the country's destiny? Does he have the stamina to stay the course and not abandon the public arena at the first sign of trouble? And, let there be no misgivings; life is going to be tough, nasty and brutish, at least for the next five years. Leadership of the Congress will not be a picnic.

To begin with, Rahul Gandhi will need to come to terms with the harsh reality that the electorate has totally trashed his undemocratic sense of entitlement that assumed that simply because his father was once prime minister of India he too was destined to reside at Race Course Road. He will need to cure himself of this f lawed thought that it was the organisational karma of every Congressman to see to it that this dynastic preference was carried out.

If Rahul Gandhi wants to stay as the leader of the Congress, he will have to re-invent himself, rather than expect the party to re-cast itself to suit his sophomoric ideas. So far Rahul Gandhi has had an almost non-existent relationship with the Congressmen; or, at best a relationship defined by a genteel sullenness.

More than the young vice president himself, his very nonpolitical praetorian guard came to internalise this haughty approach - undesirable and undeserved - towards Congressmen, be he a central minister or a pradesh president or a Member of Parliament. This coterie destroyed whatever possibility there was a working chemistry between the vice-president and the rest of the party hierarchy.

He acted as if he was contemptuous of the very party and its cadres he pretended to lead. The leadership of a political party can based only on mutual joy and mutual dependence between the leader and the led; otherwise the yields would continue to be meager.

It is too easy and essentially escapist argument to attribute the massive defeat to a deadly, rampant anti-incumbency, after ten years of power at the Centre. There was nothing inevitable about the Modi victory; it had to do with debilitating organisational and leadership weaknesses.

For ten years, the Congress has indulged Rahul Gandhi; now he will have to change and indulge the organisation. To begin with he will have to change his thinking, change his working and personal habits, and change his amateurish team. And, he would need to imbibe a simple lesson from the lives and struggles of his grand-mother and great-grandfather: Dynasty or no dynasty, leadership of a great political party like the Indian National Congress has to be earned and deserved.

Otherwise, impulses and argument would assert themselves and demand retribution.